Essay On Racism In The Heart

Is Racism in the Heart?
Ethics Term Paper Racism comes in many different shapes, sizes, and faces. Although, living in the 21st century, how can we detect what is racist and what isn’t? What is the difference between yelling racial slurs and making jokes at a comedy clubs? How can we tell if someone is being racist or even better yet, how can we tell if we ourselves are racist? To answer questions like these and many more, there needs to be a clear cut definition to what racism is and what it means to be a racist. There are two ends of the stick to the definition issue, who gets to decided what it means and will it harm more than heal? This can be a problem because if person X believes racism means one thing and person Y believes it means
something else then we have an issue and cause ethical problems among each other. In this paper, my goal is convince you that racism is something that is learned through social interactions and the lack of education towards a certain group of people. Jorge Garcia argues that racism has nothing to do with what we feel or believe it is something that comes from the heart.
It has to do with more what we like, dislike, and what attitudes we have associated. He states in his paper, “The heart of racism” on page 6, “it is hatred, ill-will, directed against a person or persons on account of their assigned race.” He makes it clear that feelings are stronger objective than beliefs because someone can feel negativity towards someone else and the outcome will result negativity, but in the case of having a certain belief about a race is not considered racist. Garcia argues that feelings are primary and beliefs are secondary. Garcia also mentions that feelings are fundamentals and we only adopt negative beliefs towards a race. An example that goes with Garcia argument goes like this; imagine you’ve were recently robbed and decided to get new locks installed in your house. Two Hispanic gentle in wife beaters with tattoos across their arms and shoulders came over to install the new locks in your house. You become uncomfortable with the fact that these are the men that are install locks into your house so you decide to call to get your locks reinstalled after they are done by different people. Garcia would argue that you never knew the two Hispanic men but because you felt that there were trouble you decided to get someone else to redo the work because you felt like you could trust them. Garcia states that if there is no ill will then there is no
racism. Tommie Shelby would disagree with Garcia because Shelby believes that racism is more social than psychologic. He does grant Garcia that feelings and attitude are important but they are not what shapes racism. Shelby definition of racism is that racism is an ideology and that racially prejudiced ideas combined with power, relatively dominant social status. Shelby adds to his statements by saying, “I would rather suggest we view racism as an ideology. Put briefly… ideologies are widely accepted illusory systems of belief that function to establish or reinforce structures of social oppression.” An example that would better help you understand Shelby’s argument goes like this; imagine yourself as a middle class man that is anti-racism and you and your friend the south of Chicago apply for the same retail manager position and he got the job and you didn’t. You can’t seem to understand how your black friend manage to get that position and you didn’t and you start to believe that he only received the position because they needed more black managers in the company. Shelby would argue that this type of ideology is racist and is the cause of racism. We start to have these belief systems because of our social interactions. Even though, the black person was your friend and you felt nothing again him, you believed that he only got the position because he was black.